melodrama refers to theatre in which music is used to increase the spectator's emotional response or to suggest character types. While this use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used within a fairly rigid structure, and the characterizations will accordingly be somewhat one-dimensional: Heroes are unambiguously good, villains unambiguously bad, and musical cues upon entrance of either will be unambiguous in signaling these facts to the audience. In other words, a melodrama tends to be a formulaic production, with a clearly constructed world of connotations: a villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat (or rescues the heroine) and there is (generally) a happy ending.

Movies that involve melodrama

1.) portrait in black/madame x
2.) imitation of life
3.) Kings row
4.) vicente Fernandez

Plays that involve melodrama

1.) uncle Tom's cabin
2.) corsican Brothers
3.) the octoroon
4.) the perils and pauline